Luther's Works, Vol. 28

Luther’s Works: The American Edition, published by Concordia and Fortress Press between 1955 and 1986, comprises fifty-five volumes. These are a selection representing only about a third of Luther’s works in the Latin and German of the standard Weimar Edition, not including the German Bible. This volume offers three short commentaries on Pauline Epistles that were written with a particular purpose and called for by a specific need. The commentary on 1 Corinthians 7 must have been a study item for Luther himself, for in it he gives himself the opportunity to come to grips with the whole matter of celibacy versus marriage. The second item is an extended series of sermons on 1 Corinthians 15, the great chapter on the resurrection. These sermons were delivered by Luther in a time of great physical weakness, and there can be little doubt that the consciousness of personal weakness contributed much toward the desire to study and proclaim the message of 1 Corinthians 15 in depth. To this we add Luther's lectures on 1 Timothy, one of those shorter series of lectures undertaken when most of the University of Wittenberg had moved to Jena to escape the plague. Yet the subject here is not sickness or death, but the office of a bishop, or pastor, and how to administer it in faithfulness to the Gospel.